“Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.”
— Louis Armstrong
Every Wednesday brings Words of Wisdom here at the Color in my Piano blog in the form of a musical quote or joke, intended to bring inspiration or humor to the middle of your week. Have suggestions? Send an email off to admin[at]colorinmypiano.com.
I’ve already blogged a bit about my New Year’s Resolution. Now it’s your turn!
Our previous Q&A Forum brought about a great discussion about whether or not to lesson plan for piano lessons (and if so, how to feasibly do so even if you have a large studio). Today, let’s start a discussion about what change you’d like to make in your teaching this year! I think it’s important as teachers to continually be making little changes and looking for ways to improve our teaching. It not only makes us better teachers, but it also helps keep things fresh for our students as well as ourselves. 🙂
So, tell us:
Comment away!
I’ve been doing a bit of cleaning and reorganizing in my studio, like putting all those music books that always seem to migrate to the piano top back in their proper place on their shelves. 🙂
I also visited the music store today to pick up new books for some of my students. I’m so happy to have a music store in my area again. In the town where we were living back in Michigan, there was no music store within an hour’s drive. I won’t take it for granted again, and will do my best to purchase music books from them instead of ordering online! Maybe I can help keep them in business. 😉
With the arrival of the new year, it’s also time to plan ahead for the student events that springtime inevitably brings! I’ve been using my Studio Planning Calendar (pdf is available for download on the Printables > Studio Business page) to plan for upcoming festival and event dates held by the music associations in my area. I’m excited about all the different opportunities there are for my students to participate in, and I’d like to send at least a couple of students to each event. I also have a few students that I might enter in The Achievement Program for assessment in May, provided they are interested.
How is the New Year going for you? 🙂
The new year always brings about a time of reflection for me. I find myself thinking back over the past year and looking forward to the future, wondering what the new year might bring.
This year was a time of great change for my husband and me. In May, I graduated with my Master of Music degree. We also moved to a new state. It has been an adjustment to be out-of-school. I still keep myself just as busy as I was during grad school, but it’s a different kind of busy. Instead of having a schedule where nearly every half-hour of my day was portioned out to a class, rehearsal, or other appointment, my schedule is suddently much more flexible. Now I have the flexibility to choose when I complete the items on my “to-do” list. And I have to time to work on various projects that I never would have had time to do during grad school. Continue reading “Thoughts for the New Year”
As promised, here is a slideshow of photos from my student’s recent Christmas recital/party. Enjoy!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O2V5khQ-4A
Click here to read about the three games we played after the recital.
“The most fun happens in music when you’re not doing it, when the music plays itself. Why is this night different than all other nights? Why is music different from anything else in life? When we let things flow, joy happens.”
— Eddie Daniels
Every Wednesday brings Words of Wisdom here at the Color in my Piano blog in the form of a musical quote or joke, intended to bring inspiration or humor to the middle of your week. Have suggestions? Send an email off to admin[at]colorinmypiano.com.
Here’s what I gave my students for Christmas this year:
A Symphony chocolate bar, and a personalized glass ornament.
I found the glass ornaments at a craft store (Hobby Lobby). On each ornament, I wrote the student’s name and “2011” on the ornament using a paint pen. I put colorful confetti and pieces of old sheet music inside each ornament. I thought they turned out cute!
For my adult students, I bought music dictionaries. The A to Z of Foreign Musical Terms
Well, my students’ Christmas party/recital was a success! What a great way to finish off the year.
The recital took place in my home. Whenever my college music history textbooks mentioned Schubertiads, I used to dream about the idea of having informal music performance parties in my home. Since my studio is still small, I thought having our Christmas recital in my home would be so fun! About 25 people attended, which is probably close the max that I can fit. Next year I’ll have to find another location, or hold the party with just the students. But it was nice and cozy this year!
We kicked off the party with the recital portion, and then we played three music games:
Christmas Carol Rhythm Matchups — This game from Jennifer Fink’s Pianimation blog was a great hit with students! Students worked together in a huddle on the floor to match the rhythms to the Christmas song lyrics. They were able to successfully complete all three levels of difficulty! Even the youngest beginners were able to match a few. I ended up with three students who played “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas” during the recital because I have so many little beginners right now. They were definitely able to help match that pair! 🙂
Make Me A Rhythm! game — This is a game I found on a forum and shared about a few weeks ago. This game wasn’t a total success, I’ll admit. My students were very, very shy about asking other students to be note values as they composed a rhythm. After all, this is the first time they’ve met each other. Next time I use this game, I’ll use it with a smaller group (maybe in a setting where students are present without their parents), or with a group of people who know each other better. It wasn’t a total flop though. It’s a great game for visual learners. The “composer” had to think about how many beats they had left in their measure. Once each rhythm was composed, we clapped it together to see how the composers’ rhythm sounded. It was fun, it just went slowly since students took a long time to choose.
Music Bingo — I LOVE Susan Paradis’ version of Music Bingo. You won’t find a nicer version of Music Bingo anywhere! I’ve used Susan’s version of Music Bingo in previous years for other events (see some photos here). Both the students and parents really enjoyed playing this game!
This is a simple game to play with groups of students that makes note-naming flashcards a bit more interesting. It involves sorting the flashcards onto alphabet letter signs on the floor, as pictured on the right (the “A” flashcards would go in the blank space on the right side of the page).
The game is pretty flexible, because beforehand you can sort out exactly which flashcards you want to focus on with your students. This also allows you to control how long you wish the game to continue.
You can also use different flashcards. With my Homeschool Music Class this week, we used my Piano Key naming flashcards (they came with the MiniMusic set I purchased earlier this year). With my Piano Readiness Class, we’ve been doing on-staff work so we used regular staff-note-naming flashcards (I use this set from Faber & Faber
Another tip with this game: if you are using the note-naming flashcards, arrange the musical alphabet signs on the floor in a column, so that A is at the bottom and G is at the top. I recommend this because this arrangement resembles the staff, where the musical alphabet progresses vertically. If you are using piano-key-naming flashcards, I would arrange the signs on the floor horizontally, just like the keyboard.
Download the pdf of the alphabet signs and detailed gameplay instructions by visiting the Printables > Games page. Scroll down to the M’s for “Musical Flashcard Sorting game.”
Musical Flashcard Sorting game (1.2 MiB, 13,247 hits)
“Music after all is the background score to our lives, not merely surviving in our memory banks long after so many of our seemingly stronger memories have faultered, but serving to remind us of who we were at a given moment of our lives, where we were, what we dreamed of, what we feared, and of course who we loved.”
— Anonymous
Every Wednesday brings Words of Wisdom here at the Color in my Piano blog in the form of a musical quote or joke, intended to bring inspiration or humor to the middle of your week. Have suggestions? Send an email off to admin[at]colorinmypiano.com.
My apologies for being MIA from the blog the last few weeks! At the beginning of the semester, I put up posters around the music building of the university in my town for freelancing as a collaborative pianist. A few music majors contacted me rather last minute to ask if I’d accompany them for their end-of-the-semester juries as well as a concerto competition. Learning their music and scheduling rehearsals has kept me very busy the last few weeks! But I’m grateful for the extra money, especially after finishing all my Christmas shopping. 🙂 Anyway, I’m back now! Juries are today, and this week will be much less hectic than the previous few weeks.
Now I’m focusing on the last stages of planning for my Studio Christmas Party on Saturday. A couple of parents have volunteered to bring goodies, so I just need to make a few things. I found some great food ideas on Pinterest. (I love Pinterest! Are any of you on Pinterest? Feel free to follow me, and I’ll be sure to follow you back!) Continue reading “Studio Christmas Party Update – Food!”
“This will be our reply to violence: to make music more devotedly, more passionately, more beautifully than ever before.”
— Anonymous
Every Wednesday brings Words of Wisdom here at the Color in my Piano blog in the form of a musical quote or joke, intended to bring inspiration or humor to the middle of your week. Have suggestions? Send an email off to admin[at]colorinmypiano.com.
Your Cart is Empty
